Brush Off Your Mandarin

This is a new one: The marching order of the 205 nations (officially, National Olympic Committees; in Oly-speak, NOCs) will be determined by the number of Chinese strokes in the first syllable of each country name as written in Mandarin.

This is a dramatic shift from the time-honored tradition of using the first letter of each NOC.

This also means you non-Mandarin speakers will have no idea when to catch your favorite country on parade.

But wait! Heavy Medal is on the case. We will find the marching order, and if we can't, we will sit in front of the TV in Beijing Friday night and blog the marching order for you, so you can be fully informed for Friday night's telecast.